[jacquesm]

I'm not so sure about that. Humanity is turning ever more inward and education is getting worse and worse with the peak somewhere in the 1950's. If we have a bright future in space travel none of the countries with launch capability today look like they will be the ones driving it.

[dotnet00]

I don't see where you're getting this from?

It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on.

The only people saying that the countries with launch capability right now will not be the ones driving space travel are those who have (ironically) paid zero attention to the developments in progress.

[jacquesm]

What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future.

> SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on.

Yes, we had all that and then some. Somewhere between the 60's and the 80's we took a detour and since then we've been losing momentum ever faster. I'm not one of the believers in Elon Musk, his Mars Colony is just a way to get people to do what he wants them to do. China has so many internal issues that I highly doubt they will be able to sustain any long term efforts and India may well be the future, though it would have to deal with a lot of internal problems as well if it is to happen. South Korea 'achieved orbit' on a SpaceX rocket, not by their own power.

You can label all of this as progress and in terms of volume launched into space it is impressive, but it doesn't move the needle in terms of actual progress towards anything much larger. It's like the software people with 30 times one year of experience, we're getting really good at redoing the years between 1939 and 1969. But we haven't progressed to 1990 even once. 1977: peak humanity.

[Robotbeat]

We never had the launch rate in the 1960s that we do today. It really doesn’t matter if you believe Musk or not, NASA is contracting with SpaceX to use Starship (and others) for lunar surface missions of far greater capability than Apollo. Our missions to Mars also far exceed what we did in the 60s and 70s, both the US and China are funding and planning sample return missions, in addition to lunar surface bases. And Starship is so capable, it’s launching more for a single Artemis mission than all Apollo combined or all the mass needed for NASA’s Crewed Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0. And Starship is just one of half a dozen RLVs being developed as we speak (with metal bent, engines test firing). We will soon leave the high water mark of Apollo far behind.

[coldpie]

> What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future.

You're in a pit, friend. Yes, there is some backsliding in a few spots, but overall education levels are higher than ever and amazing science is happening right freakin' now (JWST, asteroid sample return missions, a real shot at putting humans on the moon again, MRNA vaccines, CRISPR...). Nothing is ever perfect and it's good to recognize that fact, but don't focus only on the bad things or you'll miss all the good things that are happening all around you.

[matwood]

> 1977: peak humanity

I think the LGBTQ and minority communities would like to have a word. Don't get sucked into the golden age fallacy.

[jacquesm]

I thought the context was science, subject space.

[ajmurmann]

Well you said "1977: peak humanity" and not "1977: peak space exploration and science"

[jacquesm]

Ah I see. Ok.

[ajmurmann]

You don't have to go that narrow to refute this nonsense. Pretty much nothing was better back then. Many countries experienced regular famines. Much higher infant mortality. Much lower literacy rates. Wanna get surgery in the 70s or now? Medicine might as well be from another planet today. Even just looking at the US many of these statistics are worse and the "a single income could get you a house for a family of four"-BS is also not covered by fact, but by thinking the 70s were accurately depicted by tv shows. Much smaller houses and lower home ownership rates and families statistically had one car, not two as today. On top of that we have people fuming now because we are giving a few billion USD worth of equipment to Ukraine instead of paying for the expensive disposal off that hardware. Back then we paid enormous amounts on preparing for a war to end all wars against the Soviet Union. Things are so much better, it's insane!

[skissane]

> I'm not one of the believers in Elon Musk, his Mars Colony is just a way to get people to do what he wants them to do.

I'm sceptical Musk will actually succeed in establishing a genuine "Mars Colony" in his lifetime.

However, I think it is very likely SpaceX will succeed in landing an uncrewed Starship on Mars-likely within the next 10 years. Even if that's all they achieve, that would represent a massive increase in our robotic exploration abilities, simply in terms of the significantly greater mass - we could land dozens of Mars rovers in a single mission.

And I think a crewed Mars mission eventually happening is likely too. It is likely to take a lot longer than Musk thinks, but he's only 52; he probably will still be around in another 30 years, and it is not impossible he'll still be around in another 40, so I think the odds he'll live to see a crewed mission to Mars are decent.

But there is a big gap between "small-scale crewed scientific research station" and "interplanetary colonisation", and I'm sceptical Musk will live to see that gap traversed. Although he'll probably handwave away the distinction, and claim the first as the start of the second.

[dotnet00]

Thanks for clarifying that you really no idea what you're talking about.

South Korea achieved orbit by their own power, on their own rocket: https://www.voanews.com/a/south-korea-tests-space-rocket-/66...

It actually does move the needle because the key feature of many upcoming vehicles is significant private investment, focus on higher cadences, lower costs and in some cases, partial or full reusability. All of which are factors indicative of increasing expansion into space as it starts increasingly becoming commercialized. That isn't just "getting really good at redoing 1939 to 1969", that's taking the latest in materials science, electronics and so on to push the line in what we are capable of doing in space. These capabilities were simply not realistic even in the 90s. Both American lunar landers under development are near scifi in terms of their capabilities, a far cry from the Apollo era's closet sized tin can.

Saying we're only redoing things is like saying that the latest x86 CPUs are just redoing what the original 8086 did.

[jacquesm]

Ah sorry for being out of the loop on that one, thanks for the correction. But: it's nothing that hasn't been done many times before, it isn't a space program so much as it is an arms race between NK and SK.

I'm fine with SK getting some satellites into orbit to keep an eye on their neighbor but at the same time I don't see it as a breakthrough of sorts. Starship, if and when it works and if and when it is used to get stuff out of the Earth-Moon system would be a step. For now I don't see that happening any time soon, if at all. But I'm prepared to be amazed, and Gwynne Shotwell has a history of delivering the goods.

[eastern]

Also, there's that other country, which cannot be named, which can do this rocket shit reasonably well.

[dotnet00]

I tend to generally ignore Russia in the context of development nowadays in spaceflight because I don't see them having the spare resources or talent to do any meaningful new development. They're good at reusing and iterating what they inherited from the USSR, but they've promised so much new stuff over the years and have delivered on basically nothing. The countries I mentioned have all at least managed to bring online modern "from scratch" designs in reasonable timeframes.

[Robotbeat]

China?

[dotnet00]

I did mention China as an example of humanity increasingly reaching for the stars :)

I don't like them politically, but they are clearly a very capable spacefaring nation, with the capability to develop new space-related technologies.

[manicennui]

There are many, many unmanned missions happening now making amazing discoveries. Cassini was nothing short of mind blowing.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to your claims, and I wish more people were intellectually curious, but there are very likely more people in absolute numbers performing scientific research now than ever.

[jacquesm]

I'll believe it when I see it. For now the Voyagers are the only thing out there that are expanding our envelope of influence, everything else is just data and will eventually evaporate.

Think about it from a non-solar system perspective. Nothing we've done since Voyager has had any effect outside of our solar system and if we don't change our attitude it is quite likely that nothing ever will. Everything else we've done will long term only be a little bit of radiation, some of it structured but so far below the noise floor it will be unrecoverable.

[matwood]

IMO, throwing out more Voyager like probes is not really the next step in humanities evolution towards space. It was a good step in the 70s, but now we're working to the lay the foundation and hope that one day space travel can be nearly routine as air travel is today. Higher volume of launches, bringing down the costs, etc... will allow hundreds and thousands of Voyagers to be sent out aimed at specific, distant locations.

You may dislike Musk, but SpaceX is pushing getting to space forward.

[Robotbeat]

New Horizons is also on its way out of the solar system, and it is still potentially encountering celestial bodies out there.

[yreg]

That's a strangely high bar. As if Voyager had some nonnegligible effect outside of the Solar system.

[jacquesm]

If something like Voyager would arrive from outside our Solar system it would be the event of the millenium.

[kadoban]

There's every possibility that neither Voyager will ever arrive anywhere ever again. If they do, it's going to be after our galaxy collides with another, and the place they arrive at may not even exist yet.

https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-dist...

[lIl-IIIl]

While the Milky Way galaxy is on course to collide with Andromeda galaxy in 4.5 billion years, that will not make Voyager's arrival anywhere more likely, since the stars are far enough apart that they will not be affected.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_...

[yreg]

Well so would be picking up radio signals like the ones we emit.

And while the probability that someone will be able to pick these signals up is low, it is still almost infinitely greater than that of someone finding one of the Voyagers out there.

[telotortium]

Launching more Voyagers is like tossing heavy metal disks into a random deep-sea part of the ocean and hoping one of them lands next to a benthic creature that can miraculously appreciate its significance. Not only is God more plausible, so is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[jacquesm]

God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster aren't real. But Voyager is.

[mlrtime]

You missed the pun.

[fsmv]

It's not the countries anymore. The future is starship.

[sharma-arjun]

This is only true in the western world. Globally, education has been trending upwards, at least until the pandemic.

What is happening is a noticeable decline in the levels of trust in education and science. Generally, in the rich world, education used to be assumed to be a necessarily good allocation of resources, and whether you accessed it or not was largely a function of your wealth. Now, in some pockets of the world, this is no longer true.

I also think that space travel will only see a revival in public interest if it provides viable economic value or becomes a renewed front for competing nationalism, neither of which appear to be extremely likely in the short term. Up to that point, I think it'll continue to be a playground for billionaires.

[nonethewiser]

Just a reminder that the department of education did not exist until 1980. Disagree on the trajectory of space travel though.

[akokanka]

China Will. Their education is mint. Current US education model is too soft and weak. Perfect for war meatballs not enough for space travel.